The Firing of Viktor Shokin
A dissection of Oliver Carroll's Propaganda Hit Piece on Victor Shokin
Viktor Shokin, Ukraine’s Former Chief Prosecutor
A dissection of Oliver Carroll's propaganda hit piece on Victor Shokin by William Whitten
Donald Trump said Ukraine’s former chief prosecutor was an honest, wronged man, fired after Joe Biden tried to shut down an investigation into his son’s gas company.
"David Sakvarelidze was five months into a new job as Ukraine’s reformist deputy chief prosecutor when a witness came forward with intelligence that would change the course of everything.
“The witness, a sand producer in the Kiev region, complained of men extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars. It took a while to persuade the man to give evidence?” [How was this unnamed witness “persuaded” to testify?] But when he did, and the investigation began, the trail led to two of the country’s highest-placed prosecutors. A search of the men’s apartments revealed a scene that looked like a comic heist: bags full of cash, diamonds and other precious stones. But that was not the only incriminating evidence. Documents seized at the time indicated the men appeared to have a connection to the top prosecutor in the land, Viktor Shokin.”
So here we have the first assertion by Mr. Carroll being based on allegations of an unnamed “witness” that may have been physically coerced into speaking about evidence said to “appear” to have a connection with Viktor Shokin.
“Police found copies of Shokin’s passports, property registration certificates and even his license to carry firearms. One of the two men, it transpired, was Shokin’s former driver who had subsequently climbed the ranks behind his boss. For Sakvarelidze, there were clear suspicions the two men may have been carrying out the business of the chief. But his attempts to investigate were frustrated. Soon, he faced a corruption investigation himself. At loggerheads with Shokin, he was pushed out of his job within the year.”
So here we have an obvious motive for Sakvarelidze to hold a grudge against Shokin
“The top prosecutor would also depart in March 2016, at the behest of US vice-president Joe Biden. It was an intervention into local politics that would come back to haunt both Biden and Ukraine.”
Yes, the scene of Biden telling the tale at a meeting of the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) is shown in Hunter Biden’s laptop:
– 12:27 Joe Biden at CFR bragging about how he strong armed the Ukrainian president into firing Viktor Shokin then Prosecutor General of Ukraine.
45:00 Biden bragging about the number of times he dined with Xi Jinping.
“All that changed with the intervention of Donald Trump. The American president's description of Shokin as “that very good” prosecutor, quoted during his now-infamous 25 July call with President Volodymyr Zelensky, certainly surprised most Ukrainians. For the former prosecutor, it was a chance to rehabilitate himself.
The wild conspiracy theory on which Trump based his assertion – that Joe Biden had Shokin removed to stop him investigating wrongdoing in his son’s gas company – has already been widely debunked.”--Carroll
But wait! Where does this assertion come from? This is supposed to be proven in this article by Carroll himself – This is circular reasoning based on very tenuous allegations that we have already noted.
Another thing that must be highlighted is that anyone who stoops to using the phrase, “wild conspiracy theory” is dissembling in an attempt to shut down the conversation. This is an old worn out ploy disinformants have used since the early 1960s. How did this “surprise most Ukrainians”? Where is Carroll’s proof that “most Ukrainians” were surprised, or even cared or knew about a phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy?
“Put simply, the chronology doesn’t work – the investigation into Burisma, where Hunter worked, was dormant by the time Shokin was pushed out. It would also represent a major historical anomaly. During Shokin’s 13 months in office, not one major figure was convicted. No oligarch. No politician. No ranking bureaucrat. It would appear unlikely he was in the middle of breaking the habit with the Bidens.”-ibid
“dormant ? It would appear unlikely he was in the middle of breaking the habit with the Bidens.”
If Shokin was concentrating on digging into Hunter Biden and his most curious employment on the Burisma board of directors, making $8,000. a month, even though he had no expertise for such a position, one might wonder how many road blocks were thrown in front of Shokin by Joe Biden during that period leading up to Biden pressuring the Ukrainian president to oust Shokin. It is Carroll’s assertions that seem unlikely when all of the facts are considered.
“Joe Biden speaks in Ukraine’s parliament in December 2015. It was on this trip that he pressed Petro Poroshenko to fire his “much-criticised” general prosecutor Victor Shokin.” – Carroll
“In an affidavit, submitted in September in an unconnected extradition case involving oligarch Dmytro Firtash, the former prosecutor (Shokin) said he had been dismissed because he refused to heed the advice of then-President Petro Poroshenko to drop an investigation. “I was forced out because … I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden was a member of the board,” the statement reads.” – ibid
“Yet the image of Shokin as a crusading, independent prosecutor is inconsistent with the picture given by half a dozen former colleagues interviewed for this piece. Unanimously, they described Shokin as a “dependent” creature; a man made in the image of whoever was his patron at the time. In three terms in office, Shokin served three presidents as either deputy prosecutor or chief prosecutor. He made himself useful to all three, the sources say. He made himself especially indispensable to Poroshenko, with whom he has been linked since at least 2001.
“Shokin was quiet, unassuming, and he always fulfilled his orders,” says Oleksandr Martynenko, a prominent Ukrainian journalist who worked as press secretary to Leonid Kuchma, the first president under whom Shokin served.” -ibid
Let us deconstruct these paragraphs, as it will be shown further down in this article that none of these so called “half a dozen former colleagues” were actually Shokin’s colleagues; there is the journalist, Oleksandr Martynenko. The rest of the “former colleagues” remain anonymous and their specific words are never divulged in this article.
“In an interview in Kiev, the former chief prosecutor Sviatoslav Piskun, the man responsible for that promotion, revealed he hired Shokin after serious lobbying by Petro Poroshenko. At the time, the future president was a minor oligarch and deputy leader of the Our Ukraine faction in parliament. “Poroshenko came to me with a clear request and the signatures of a hundred people in his faction,” says Piskun, who headed the prosecutor’s office between 2002-2005. “For the time I have known them, Shokin and Poroshenko were always extremely close. I must admit I never quite got to the bottom of exactly what their relationship was.”--ibid
What is the meaning of this paragraph? How is it relevant to the overall picture Carroll is painting in this article? Is it that no one can get to the bottom of what goes on in the Ukrainian political scene? Is the point that Carroll himself can’t make heads or tails of what went on in Ukraine in this period although he indicates that he spoke personally to these people. But he does not disclose whether he spoke to these people in person in Ukraine, or if he merely spoke to them in phone interviews or perhaps email exchanges.
“Following the Orange Revolution in 2004, Poroshenko took control of Ukraine’s national security council. Shokin got a second stint as deputy prosecutor. In 2014, Poroshenko emerged from the Euromaidan revolution as president. And Shokin, at that point a pensioner, returned to the limelight as deputy prosecutor for the third time, becoming the main man a year later.
“They were together till the end,” says former deputy prosecutor Sakvarelidze. “You can be sure there were financial ties. In Ukraine, it is normal for a major oligarch to find his own prosecutor, his own judges and so on. Shokin was Poroshenko’s special deputy prosecutor. There was no surprise when Poroshenko brought him out of retirement.”--Carroll
After dissecting Mr. Carroll’s entire article the only conclusion I can come to is that Joe Biden had Shokin fired to protect Hunter’s position on the Burisma board and conceal his own involvement with the criminal activities his son Hunter was involved in.
What was this Orange Revolution in 2004?
2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution.
Ukraine of 2010 was a very different proposition to the country Yanukovych had first sought to rule six years earlier. Thanks to the Orange Revolution, Ukraine’s media landscape was no longer subject to the kind of smothering government censorship that had existed prior to 2004. In its place was a lively if imperfect form of journalistic freedom that reflected the competing interests of the country’s various oligarch clans. Once he became president, Yanukovych was unable to put the genie of a free press back into the bottle. Instead, his attempts to reverse the gains of the Orange Revolution helped spark the 2014 uprising that led directly to his downfall.
But we know that the 2014 “uprising” was in fact a coup precipitated by CIA through the auspices of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
https://mronline.org/2022/07/06/anatomy-of-a-coup/
Conclusion:
Viktor Shokin was fired at behest of Joe Biden to protect his interests in his son Hunter’s illicit dealings with Burisma.